Generally in video systems video is captured and stored in memory, and fed into a video processing unit before being sent out for display on a video output device. Processing can involve such functions as, for example, scaling, compositing, and format conversion. Scaling can be horizontal and/or vertical, where scaling in one direction can involve increasing or decreasing the pixels per line, thus increasing or decreasing the size of an image and its format. Compositing can involve overlaying the video with a layer of graphics or text.
In some instances, the size of the video captured is larger before processing than afterwards. In such instances, the system uses more bandwidth for capturing the video than may be necessary. In other instances, capturing the video before processing is more efficient, since some scaling and format change can convert the video to a size or format that requires more bandwidth.
Video systems can be designed to capture the live video stream first, perform processing, then display the video, or process the live streaming video, capture it into memory, then display it. However, most video systems receive live streaming video that can have different formats at the input and different sizes. Processing is used to ensure optimal display of the video. As a result, while capturing-processing-displaying is efficient for certain portions of the video stream, such a sequence of actions can be inefficient for other portions of the video stream. As a result, the system can unnecessarily waste system resources to capture more information than needed. Similarly, a system can be designed to perform processing-capturing-displaying of the video, but that sequence can be efficient for some portions of the video and not efficient for other portions of the same video.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.